Rick Rubin Working on Kanye West's New Album
Rick Rubin and Kanye West are back together for the Chicago MC's upcoming seventh studio album, the producer revealed to BBC Radio 1's Zane Lowe. During a four-part interview airing Monday (June 16) through this Thursday, Rubin said that he and West are still in the early creative stages and are "looking at vocal ideas for things for the next album."
Rubin, who co-founded Def Jam with Russell Simmons in 1984, worked on West's most recent studio release, Yeezus. "There were loads of great ideas and there were many many tracks and we listened to everything together," Rubin recalled of listening to demo tracks off the album. "He originally came over and said 'I wanna come play you my new album' and I thought we’d be listening to a finished album. Then we listened to about three hours of music, most of which didn’t have vocals, and at the end I was like, 'wow, so what’s it gonna be?' I'm thinking it's a year away and he was like 'Well, I'm putting it out in like 5-6 weeks.'"
Rushing the process didn't pan out well commercially for 'Ye. Although sonically and conceptually unique, Yeezus was enigmatic to some fans and remains West's lowest-selling album to date with 636,000 copies.
Over the weekend, West performed Bonnarroo Music Festival for the first time since 2008. Reports say that the 37-year-old gave a rousing performance but was booed by some people in the crowd of 90,000 attendees. He also lashed out at the press (again).
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(Photos from left: Larry Busacca/Getty Images for MTV, Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
